


What's Put Together Easily

by ParadifeLoft



Series: Giftmas 2013 [4]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mental Health Issues, aman - Freeform, taking the 'dys-' out of 'dysfunctional relationships'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 12:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finwe seeks a sympathetic ear for his marital troubles in Valimar, and gets more than he asked for. Míriel gets more still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Put Together Easily

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Urloth (CollyWobbleKiwi)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollyWobbleKiwi/gifts).



> Happy Giftmas, Syrisa! God, honestly I feel like I should be thanking _you_ for the opportunity to write this; this fic is something that feels like it's been a long time coming in terms of stuff that is extremely important to me. *wails about Míriel and flops incoherently into a pile of pillows and doesn't get up*
> 
> ...I think I'm just gonna leave this here now before I stop being able to say words entirely :P

Ingwe introduces her to him when Finwe visits Valimar: Elemmíre, his newest poet at court, and betimes a scholar of religious philosophy as well. Perhaps, his friend says with a gentle hand at Finwe's back, perhaps one with less closeness to his situation, might offer better advice.

Finwe is not inclined, to reveal as much of himself as he can only imagine being necessary, to anyone but the closest friend he has made, here in the Blessed Realm. But close friends trust; he nods his head in assent, after some hesitance. He moves to meet Elemmíre; she takes his arm, and leads him to Ingwe's palace gardens.

As they walk, the poet is silent, and Finwe speaks of Míriel.

"Must a thing be perfect to be worthwhile, my lord? Can it not be simply better than what once was?"

Finwe scowls, his mind a murky black Cuiviénen night. He walks too far from the edges of the camp; ready to be plucked away by the shadow-presence he had fled. Can the light not burn it all away? "I was promised perfection. That is what _I_ promised to _you_."

The gardens of Valimar are certainly perfection: not a superfluous spring of a branch out of place; each curve of the cultivated flowers exact in colour and form, expertly bred. He envies his friend, his chief above all other chieftans - could not Ingwe rule alone, Finwe bent the knee same as any of his Noldor, leaving him to his own greater pleasures and skills? No, no, what horror would that bring to the Blessed Land, but the same schisms before the Journey… Lady Tánatye would not stand Ingwe's sole rule, and Finwe himself stood precarious with her and her kin as it was.

He sees a vision of a black stain from his family, spilling out to blot the Trees into darkness.

Elemmíre sweeps her hand in a graceful arc about the garden path. "And did you not receive it? Are there flaws in what has been _given_?"

" _Yes_ ," Finwe insistes, a bile rising in the back of his throat. "Yes, there are flaws, that is what I have been _telling_ you; my wife shows no care or joy; some days she will scarce leave her bed - the only love she shows is for our son, and to me it is but a pretension made to soothe my thoughts. She is a terrible liar, and I know each attempt she uses to persuade me of her feelings because I have near taught them all to her!"

His son would come to him, climbing into his lap or hovering about his legs, peering with wide grey eyes at whatever lay around him - he would not, at times, respond to any prodding of Finwe's when he attempted to show the boy his works. His mother's son, and scarce Finwe's; and as Míriel took their child from him, so her child took Míriel.

Finwe looks away, ashamed of his thoughts, of how they spilled so easily to this near-stranger.

But Ingwe's court poet is indulgent; she but shakes her head with a faint, sympathetic smile. "I've heard you the first time," almost kind, almost a hard edge hitting against the wrist of a small child trying to steal a pastry. "You speak of nothing that's been given to you. Nothing of Valinor. Should coming here alleviate the problems we bring with us? If such were possible, why create this place? Why not alter directly the Marred land we come from? The nature of a thing once created cannot be changed to destroy some aspect of its being; all that can be done is to create another aspect anew. Such is Valinor. Such is not your queen."

He can find no fault; yet he does not wish to admit his own flawed understanding of what was possible. _The Valar lied_ , he thinks, and then recoils, because to have fallen under the sway of lies, if their words were such, would be just as poor a stain upon himself.

And he settles, then, upon that counter to Elemmíre's argument, nonetheless: "Yet my son has been born here, and you cannot say his nature is not also Marred. Perhaps nothing that _was_ created here, and yet we bring our own natures to the Valar's paradise, and give our spirits to our children! If it may spread in such a way, what's to say not in some other!"

They stop, Finwe following Elemmíre's cue. Her lips purse; her eyes level down. "If that is so, perhaps this _other_ way is through sympathetic link, and the nourishment of the child's fëa after it has been born as well. And so far as you have told me, I cannot fault your _wife_ for speaking poorly of the boy and haunting his mind with thoughts of the Dark."

Cold settles in Finwe's chest. "I do no such thing. Tell me, lady, how aught I do is for purpose besides the betterment of my wife and child's fëar, and perhaps - "

"You may take your leave now, Your Grace," she replies, before he has even finished speaking. She puts her sheer sleeves together, hands enfolded inside, and bows to him.

He realises, at least, not to overstay his welcome.

 

\----

 

"My highest lords." Finwe kneels to the ground in the circle of the Mahanaxar, head bowed. Míriel kneels as well, a faint anger behind her closed eyes. She is dressed in the robes of a supplicant to Lórien, and she is still.

"I come entreating that if you love Ilúvatar's children as you promised my kin and I, when we stood ambassadors before the Two Trees, you will aid me now and heal my wife of the Marring in her spirit."

The Valar stir; their fanar move as alike to the Eldar's bodies in communication, but they do not speak.

Námo calls his eyes first to Finwe's face, impassive. Counsellor of fates to Manwe - should he not know best the fruits of any given course? "Those in need of healing should seek my brother," he pronounces. A flick of his gaze to Míriel, where she holds her own head high to stare past his own.

Finwe shakes his head, wets his lips. He has convinced half of his people to follow them to a strange land in the far-west they could scarce imagine, had he not? Yet he cannot say whether the entirety of the Noldor are a match, in this manner, for the Valar.

"I do not require of my lords the skill to return health once present now fled," he explains. "I ask the forging of a new creation entirely, from the Unmarred essence of your lands, to replace that which wounds her."

"You have not yet visited Lórien. Do not ask of us impossible remedies when you have not exhausted those we provide to you in the fullness of our power."

"If I lay to sleep in Lórien, my fëa shall not return to my body once departed. Can you not see that, Lord of Fates?"

Míriel's speech cuts quick, before Finwe can answer. Can answer with less antagonism, he thinks, averting his gaze, as his own fëa winces.

"Queen Míriel is strong in spirit, and might easily master her hroa to dispel this illness, if my lords could create a new link, tying the two together that has not been touched by the Marred Outer Lands," Finwe explains, after several moments of silence. His hands are trembling, he realises.

"It is not so," says Námo. Implacable. "What you ask is impossible. The fëar of the Eldar are not so strong as you believe; any link so created would come to fail, if indeed that is the source of your trouble."

"Likely too that the Marring lies in spirit rather than body." It is an interjection, it should cut; but Ulmo's voice flows between their own as if it had always intended to present itself thus. "Our own powers may touch souls; so also may those works of Melkor's, and his designs turn toward the spirits of the Eldar as well as the earth and the sky."

A toss of silver hair shivers in Finwe's vision; Míriel straightens, draws her chin up. Her body is weak, too thin; her spirit inside burning, for Finwe can see it now, shining like the brightness amidst the dusk of the Outer Realms that he had first found himself enamoured by. "By your reckoning, I shall not be aided by the request I ask; by mine, if I attempt the healing you suggest, I shall die. So either road leads to my death, now or later; why make it any difference then if you grant my request? At least if you do I shall be some good to my family, be there success; and no, if you prove my words folly then you may say truly, the fëar of elves bear some flaw, and you shall be rid of me. Either way is a boon."

Finwe can scarce follow the speed of her argument. Either way, he is sure it is no longer his.

"What you ask moves us beyond the fate set for you," Námo replies. Can a Vala feel anger? And he speaks, Finwe suspects, not simply of Míriel, but of the Eldar as a whole. Perhaps the time is done -

An ascension from beside the lord of the Halls; Nienna Lady of Pity arises from her seat. "You see too narrowly, brother; you see resolutions and phrases but not the notes within the chords. Shall I take your griefs, Lady Þerinde? Who else alone has seen your sorrows, who might make you master of that which has befallen you again?"

Her hands are soft against Míriel's, the lightest touch, palms upturned below; and Míriel does not flinch, this time, from her gaze.

"I have nothing else," Míriel says. "I shall allow it."

The Valie's form fades. Míriel remains as she stands, though her eyes close. The rest of the Valar are silent, but Finwe can hear, at the back of his mind, a song of lament, and a countermelody weaving through, plucking up the notes to incorporate a new theme.

 

\----

 

"Let me try," comes Feanáro's voice. When Finwe brushes through the arched door, he sees his son bent before a small sampler, crimson thread in hand. Míriel glances up to meet his eye, briefly, before turning down again looking at Feanáro's work.

"Finwe, come see."

He kneels on the cushion beside his son; Feanáro angles his head to the side and holds his stiches out so Finwe may see them.

"You are very diligent," Finwe says with a smile, a true one crinkling his eyes. "And clever. You've good hands, a good mind." Feanáro's stitches do not compare to his mother's, of course; his talents, they both suspect, lie in other directions. But they are precise, and he shows many inclinations toward disparate crafts. He will have no shortage of choices.

"Come Feanáro, it is time for you to go see your tutors for lessons," Míriel says, touching his arm and rising from her own pillow. And time, on Míriel and Finwe's part, for the day's session of court to begin.

Feanáro picks himself up, tucking the sampler back into the chest where his mother keeps her supplies.

The King and Queen of the Noldor walk out to greet their subjects.


End file.
